Design of Maneuvering-Net Space Robot System

The amount of hazardous orbit debris has been increasing, posing an ever-greater danger to space assets and crewed missions. This paper proposed a novel Maneuvering-Net Space Robot System (MNSRS), which is comprised of a flexible net and four maneuvering robots, to recover the orbit environment. The MNSRS is provided with many advantages in orbit debris clearing missions, such as high efficiency, high reliability and high flexibility. Firstly the architecture, the mission scenario and the characteristics of the MNSRS are detailed described. After that a dynamics model, which divides the MNSRS into finite mass points connected with massless springs, is established to describe the approaching phase of the MNSRS. Finally some numerical simulations are implemented to validate the variation of configuration of the MNSRS.